I don't know how to start but I know I am lost. I have been clinically depressed for the past 18 months. I am being treated by a professional, and I am taking my pills. But they seem to be loosing their power now and I am getting desperate by the day. I have this absurd anxiety condition and sometimes I shake so much, specially when I am working, that in some days I cannot even feel my legs. I have cramps all the time, my calves hurt like hell and I cannot find a suitable sleeping position anymore. Well, at least with the pills I can sleep again every now and then. I decided to find help and get a shrink when I started having these deep suicidal thoughts (something I never thought I would ever have myself). I used to live in an apartment building so I would waste hours looking down at the street planning what I would need to do to leave things "tidy" once I finally did it. Now I live in a nice house, with the wife and dog that I love so much, but I am not well.

I have been working with computers since I was a teenager, for the past 15 years or so. I knew of cases similar to mine and I knew software engineering in general is quite prone to that. By that I mean severely depressed professionals. As I am a remote contractor, I don't have any health benefits I would normally get if I were a hired engineer like my friends. The bottom line of this is that I simply cannot find professional help to request non-paid time off while I treat myself. That would be a must as anyone knows depressed people eventually stop being productive. I feel completely guilty by this, and I know I shouldn't, but I do. Very much. If I had this option I would surely get away from everything for a few weeks at least and try to get better. Trying to fix a broken airplane while it is still flying in the air is impossible in my opinion. But I cannot do that. My only choice it to quit a dream job that I love. My family depend on me and I cannot simply walk away, and I don't want to walk away. I am not a rich guy with a fat savings account to keep us fed while it takes me several months to find another job. Something tells me I should let it go, but it is a lifetime opportunity for personal growth and career building. Something also reminds me I have never met anyone who retired after being a software engineer for their whole adult life. Maybe I just reached my breaking point, but I don't know how to confirm this. Maybe, just maybe, software engineering has nothing to do with my anxiety issues.

Computer geeks, I think, are usually insensitive to others personal problems. I don't know why is that but I can relate. I used to be just like that before I got into this depression swirl due to my anxiety crisis. I find it disturbing and sad no one at my work team understand this or even care. I disclosed all this once to a person that eventually put me in a hard spot that made me get worse so now I prefer to keep things to myself. I know of other people that were depressed by different reasons that got laid off from the (heavily Americanized) company so I am afraid of my current position. I know depression leads to bad performance, and I hate it. I really do, but I cannot do much about it. If I had cancer maybe I would get more sympathy, I wonder. In any case I think from the company perspective it wouldn't matter much, I don't see them keeping a person with either depression or cancer. It just sounds unfair because I bet actual hires have health benefits to cope with all this. At the same time, I feel anger because I know it all started when I burned out during a project switch in the company. I had to work oh-my-so-many hours more for several weeks to get things done. I know of people who still do this every single day. I have no idea how they manage it. Maybe it's a cultural difference, though I consider myself a hard worker and I had been told before that I am one indeed. Or it's just a survival of the "toughest" thing, I dunno.

Anyway, talking about that helps a bit. Although it changes nothing and it may possibly make things professionally worse, if you know what I mean. I think depression is a major problem in software engineering and that we don't talk enough about it because of... reasons. Most of my friends had at least one episode of anxiety crisis and now I think that they are all potential targets of this fucking depression disease, even if it takes them years to get there. And I really don't want any one of them to be in my place, ever. It is horrifying. I don't want them thinking in a daily basis about killing themselves because they cannot take it any more. I don't want them crying in bed while they should be working but no one can see them as they are cheap remote contractors. The majority of my friends are software engineers too, and I thought that maybe sharing this could help them in some tiny way.